Just gone for a Liteon 1213S - not so sure I shouldn't have saved a couple of quid and gone for the better-hacked 812S instead - mind you, if the rumours are true, maybe a P-CAV mode, 16x and DL hack are around the corner ... 16x zone-CLV mode isn't really worth having, as it's a very samll zone at the end, about where many drives actully end up having to step DOWN due to increased error rate.
Liteon seen to be pushing back against the hackers, with the firmware now being encryted, and one firmware hacker being forced to remove auto-decrypt code.
This could be a mistake by Liteon, as one of the main reasons for regarding their drives is that they ARE hackable - they NEED it, as many people are getting far better results using write strategy swaps than with the supposedly "correct" strategy for the media.
Liteon DVD-RW drives: BAD drives, that can be made good - they also tend to bounce up and down with firmware, this version good, that version bad - later firmware is USUALLY better, but some media may take a real downturn in write quality.
If you need ONE drive to do DVD and CD-R, the Liteons have good CD-R write speeds, and can overburn - two things many other DVDR drives can be rather slack on - paired with a Liteon CD-R, I'd be more inclined to go for a Pioneer - a better DVD writer out of the box, with SOME firmware hack attention for riplock, RPC and speed.